Teacher shares tale of recovery from usually fatal heart attack

Tuesday

Jun 23, 2009 at 12:01 AMJun 23, 2009 at 10:19 PM

You just don’t do what Patrick Fox did on March 31, 2008, and live to tell about it. That’s why he did. Fox suffered a widow-maker heart attack — caused by an abrupt and complete blockage of the heart’s left main artery that usually leads to death — at 9:30 that morning. By early that afternoon, he had died and been brought back to life six times. Fox has written about the pain, anxiety and frustrations he and his family experienced in “The Widow-Maker Heart Attack at Age 48,” a book published through AuthorHouse of Bloomington, Ind.

Mike DeDoncker

You just don’t do what Patrick Fox did on March 31, 2008, and live to tell about it. That’s why he did.

Fox, 49, who teaches business and computers at Rockford East High School, suffered a widow-maker heart attack — caused by an abrupt and complete blockage of the heart’s left main artery that usually leads to death — at 9:30 that morning. By early that afternoon, he had died and been brought back to life six times.

Fox has written about the pain, anxiety and frustrations he and his family experienced in “The Widow-Maker Heart Attack at Age 48,” a book published through AuthorHouse of Bloomington, Ind.

“If you go to resources about heart attacks,” Fox said, “most of the books are written by doctors or other health-care professionals.

“There’s not a whole lot of anything written by the patient about what to expect for themselves and for their families. I thought there was a niche for this kind of information. That’s why I wrote the book.”

Fox, who had been taking medication to control his cholesterol for 25 years before his heart attack, considered himself healthy and had spent the weekend before his heart attack throwing hay for his horses and cutting trees with a chain saw. He thought the pain he was feeling in the tips of his shoulder blades while he compiled students’ third-quarter grades that Monday morning was a pulled muscle or soreness from a bit of overwork.

Within in an hour, he had died and been revived in the back of a Rockford Fire Department ambulance.

Fox takes the reader from there to his slow realization that he had suffered a physical trauma he thought unlikely for himself and through his hospital recovery and cardiac rehabilitation.

“I learned that you don’t necessarily have to exhibit any of the risk factors associated with a heart attack to actually suffer a heart attack,” Fox said, “and that not all heart attacks or their symptoms are created equal.”

He said he also offered his thoughts while in the emergency room at SwedishAmerican Hospital and in cardiac intensive care to better help the loved ones of heart attack victims understand what the patient is going through and what they might do to help the victims deal with the experience.

The book also is available at amazon.com and bn.com.

Mike DeDoncker can be reached at (815) 987-1382 or mdedoncker@rrstar.com.